Today I want to delve into a passion since I was a kid, the models. I think I made more than 100 airplane models, mainly in 1/72 scale, every Xmas I wrote a letter with 10 models, fun for months 🙂
The best brand I bought those days were Hasegawa and the worse probably Italieri (I didn’t like its plastic), other brands as Revell, Tamiya (the best but expensive) were passing by my hands. The best models I’ve made were the F18 Hornet with the Spanish decals!, SR71 Blackbird, Spitfire, Hurricane, F14 Tomcat, and a Mirage IV with the free-fall nuclear weapon, it was a gift from french family.
The battleships were a good hobby too, Tamiya got the bests. I’ve built the USS New Jersey, and I hope one day I’ll buy the USS Eisenhower.
The years were passing by, and when I decided to get out of the nest, I decided to build an unique model. An airport representing the Terminal 4 Satellite of Madrid-Barajas Airport.
I reserved a place under one room’s floor, and then built it!
I use the Photoshop of my little brother to make the tarmac at 1/400 scale. It was more than 1 month of job in front of the computer, drawing the runways 36L and 32R (previously 33R), the taxiways, the stands, labeling every taxiway entrance, etc. I’m looking for the original file to show you the result, one day I will find it. When it was over, I sent it to a repography and the printed in three blocks, given a total size of 2 meters long x 2,5 meters wide.
Meantime, during 4 months I was buying the airplanes, the airliner model shops it is an amazing world. I began with these online shops:
Airline Museum shop (one of the best for me)
Ebay
Etc, etc.
Brands as Herpa, GeminiJets, Dragon Models, Hogan, etc, have an impressive diecast models most of them limited series, every airline you know, every aircraft model and every color are fully detailed.
So I had my tarmac printed, aircarft, tow bears, follow me cars and the automatic people mover, fingers (bought and self-made)… I needed a Control Tower, the terminal and the lights!
Control tower, self made with wood.
Terminal, the T4 has the walls made of glass, so methacrylate was perfect, I cut every piece with the help of my grandfather. The roof, do you see these coloured beams… the foamboard, a cutter and a lot of patience made the rest. I partly covered the beams with the silvery roof, made with layers of toilet paper.
Lights. Ikea had the perfect LED lights in 2006, now I would buy any LED roll, but then it was very difficult to get ones at a very good price.
So that’s all, and after a full weekend putting all the elements. Tarmac, terminal, lights, 70 aircarfts… and the security glass over the model. That was the result.
I hope you enjoyed it, and feel free to contacting me at Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn
This work by Pedro Garcia is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.